Monday, July 17, 2006

Who would you punch?

Seriously, which celebrity would just flat-out smack if given the opportunity? Remember that episode of Friends where they were putting together lists of five celebrities they could sleep with (In order of first to worst, mine are: Courteney Cox, Kirsten Dunst, Halle Berry, Diane Lane, and Naomi Watts)? This is sort of the inverse idea of that. Your chance to hit just once, or haul-off and utterly destroy five celebrities. This was a subject of debate I read about while perusing the Sports Guy’s mailbag over at ESPN.com. Good stuff there.

So, go ahead and pick five. You know you want to.

Now, I’m not saying you would get away scot-free with punching any of them. You have to accept the consequences. You’d have to be willing to risk jail time. I think it’s a little harder for guys to put together the list, unless you have no problem punching a lady (and you’ll see that there’s one that I have absolutely no problem with punching, my pure loathing offsets any fear of being labeled a woman-beater). There are some guys I left off the list because they could probably kick my ass (in my younger days, I might have been able to get the best of Terrell Owens, not so much now). So, without further adieu, I give you the final five:

5. Richard Dreyfuss. Yes, he’s old. I don’t care. It’s that voice. That smug, smarmy, nasal sound just infuriates me. However, I want to point out that if the movie “Jaws” had followed the plot of the book a little better, his character would have been killed. Seeing his death on screen might have allayed my desire to punch him. We’ll never know, will we? Curse you, Spielberg!

4. Kanye West. I admit it, I don’t like his style of music. But, mostly I don’t like him. Arrogance of unmitigated proportions just irks me. Nothing wrong with being confident. Nothing at all. However, this is more than confidence, this is a self-aggrandizing nature that needs to be taken down several pegs. You are not great. You are not the shit. You are a piece of shit. The only thing you've ever done that I've enjoyed was seeing the look on Mike Myers face when you espoused on how G-Dub doesn't care about black people. That was priceless. But not as priceless as a chance to shoot my fist into your solar plexus.

3. Billy Bush.I would love to go all Access Hollywood on your ass. I would punch that shit-eating grin right off your smug little face. I swear I would. First, I would have to remove your lips from any celebrity anus in a 30-mile radius and then I would punch them. Hard. You little twerp. What the hell is wrong with you? You're not a reporter, you're a fluff man for the entertainment industry. How do you sleep with yourself at night? My fingers are trying to contort themselves into fists right now as I write this.

2. Stephen A. Smith. Quite frankly, I almost put him number one on the list. If I was going with all dudes, he’d take the top slot hands down. Put us in a room together and I would kick the A. out of his name faster than he can purse his lips at the end of a diatribe. He’s everything I hate about sports journalism. More interested in himself than the story. Thinks that being loud is the same as being right. Was embarrassingly unprepared for the NBA draft coverage. Yes, I would punch this man. Repeatedly.

1. Barbara Streissand. I debated for a long time on whether or not to put her on the list. Do I include a woman in the list of people I would punch? Yes. Yes I do. That’s how much I hate this woman. Everything about her. My hatred was born about 15 years ago when I went to go see the movie “The Prince of Tides.” I loved the book. Loved it. Loved it despite it’s massive flaws. Loved it in spite of the extra 200 pages it carried. And I’ll admit I was excited to see the movie when it was released. What I watched was nothing like the book. And that’s fine. That happens. Movies and books are two completely different things. But the fact remains is that the story didn’t need changing. It needed to be pared down, and it could have been without losing its soul. Yes, protagonist Tom Wingo fell in love with his psychiatrist. But the crux of the book was that when his brother died trying to take back the family land, it left a rift so wide in the family that it disintegrated. Luke Wingo was the glue that held Tom and Savannah together. For Christ’s sake, he WAS the Prince of Tides. The fucking title character of the book. And Streissand chose to relegate the roughly 1/4 of the book that was dedicated to this crucial allegory of the fall of the south to one measly sentence in the movie and place the focus on her romantic subplot. Sort of “oh, my brother died and it kind of sucked. But now I love YOU.” I will never forgive her for this. Or forgive her bitching and moaning about the lack of respect she received at Oscar time that year. Twisting and manipulating an author’s plot to service your own narcissistic needs is cheap and debasing. And ever since I walked out of the theater I knew I had made an enemy for life. I make no qualms about it. I hate her. I loathe her with a white hot passion that scorches every fiber of my being. Even friends who don’t know that much about the disturbed machinations creaking in my cerebellum know that I hate her. At work one year, I walked down the hall to my office only to see them lined with photos of Streissand. Hundreds of them. I was presented with a cake with her picture on it and I took perverse pleasure in using the knife to first slit her throat. Then I ate her eyes. They gave me a photoshopped picture with my face done instead of James Brolin’s, resting on her shoulder. It looked so real I nearly threw up. I keep that photo on the bookcase in my office and look at it as a reminder. A reminder of how much I hate her. There was no way I could leave her off this list. None. I would punch you, Babs. I would punch you a thousand times over. I would punch you until my knuckles were splintering their own bone and cartilage into a crimson miasma on your skull. I would. I swear I would. I hate you so.